Dear Parents,
We were treated to a wonderful class assembly yesterday from our Year 1 children. They shared some of their learning from last term about Africa with some music and a re-telling of Handa’s Surprise. I was so impressed to see our young children at the front of the packed hall as they sang and talked about their learning – well done Year 1.
We have been enjoying our new season of ‘Team Time’. On Friday afternoons, the children across the school get into the teams across the year groups to share a learning activity. Currently, we have stool ball, composing music with IT, first aid, Spanish, improving the environment, sewing and dancing. The children seem to be really enjoying the opportunity to do try something different in different groups.
I hope you are enjoying the little glimmer of sun that we are seeing this morning. I’m hoping that we see some sun on Friday as the children take on their sponsored challenge – our Spend a Penny mini marathon. I spent the afternoon with Year 5 and 6 this week and stretched our legs over a couple of laps around the Rec – some of us found that a challenge so I know that the sponsorship money will be well earned!
Our Year 6 children have been preparing to take their SATs in a couple of weeks’ time. They are working hard on areas such as punctuation and grammar, arithmetic and maths reasoning. They have also been practising relating their answers to reading comprehension questions to evidence in the text. The children are getting quite adept at structuring their opinions and backing up their answers with thoughtful reasoning – I wonder if you are finding them using these skills in other settings?!
The SATs are an important way of measuring the children’s readiness for secondary school. They form an important part of the transition data passed on to their new schools and their progress when they reach GCSE’s is measured against this starting point. And yes, they are important to us as a school as they indicate the progress the children have made in English and Maths from their previous assessments at the end of Year 2. However, there is no assessment that measures the other important ways that the children show their readiness for secondary schools and the wider community: their kindness, their willingness to take on responsibilities, their care for younger children, their humour, their imagination, their courage. Whatever the outcome of these standardised academic assessments, we are very proud of each and every one of our Year 6 children.
I hope that you enjoy the long weekend and we look forward to seeing you all on Tuesday.
Kind regards,
Julie Burton
Headteacher
